


the girl who would be god

by Shadokin



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Experimental Style, F/F, POV Third Person, Retelling, Time Travel, Trans Characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:31:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9326873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadokin/pseuds/Shadokin
Summary: Max sees into the week ahead, and knows they’re all going to die.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a side story i did without meaning to. playing with a different style of writing. nothing will come of this. unless it does.

She’s desperate to fix it. Max swipes the blood away from her nose, licking the spot of her lip she didn’t get. It’s painful, but in a way that she’s used to. Sometimes she even forgets.

(she doesn’t forget, how could she, of course—)

There’s a desk in front of her, a photo in her hands. Max feels rain on her face and the push of wind through her clothes, but she’s in a classroom and there’s only sunlight and clear skies outside the windows.

Her mind is screaming in panic. Where did she go? What did she do? But outside she is still, looking ahead at her teacher, blinking slowly as she tries not to go back to sleep.

A cell phone on the table to her left vibrates in clear sight of the teacher. Max glances at it, watching Victoria check the screen before giving her attention back in front of her.

Kate is slouched in her chair, eyes down on her journal.

Hayden is sleeping with his cheek pressed into his palm.

Stella twirls her pencil before dropping it to the ground.

(max can hear the clock ticking across the room, each second duplicated, moving forward, she knows time—)

Max sees into the week ahead, and knows they’re all going to die. Because of her.

Suddenly the dread returns, and Max feels awake again. But no, she wasn’t sleeping, she hadn’t felt her eyes open, they just _were_ and there’s a weird slamming of her heart in her chest like it had returned from somewhere else.

The photo’s still pressed in her fingertips. An image of her against a wall of her images. There’s a reason she thinks, knows, but it doesn’t make sense.

 _I don’t even want to enter the contest_.

It makes her feel worse, guilty, because she should want to. There’s no reason not to try, especially when the teacher makes submitting pretty much mandatory for all his students.

(too many max, too many maxes, together, all here inside—)

The bell rang. There’s another picture of Max on the desk. Victoria’s mad at her for stealing a question Max didn’t have an answer for. Except that hasn’t happened yet.

She tosses her photos between the pages of her journal, looking through the room to see Kate still there and Victoria talking up front with the teacher.

The weight of expectancy hangs on her shoulders. Max checks again at Kate, who’s hardly her friend but always nice and caring, and walks around to the left of the classroom to get to the front.

“Mr. Jefferson?” She asks during a lull between Victoria and the teacher. Both turn to her with mad and curious looks respectively.

The photo's in her journal in her bag, and she doesn’t want to get it out. She struggles through her words, telling the teacher she doesn’t have anything worth submitting.

“Are you sure?” He says like he _knows_. “The deadline’s not for a few more days, Max. If you're unsure about the criteria for submitting, you can always ask for clarification.”

The rules were fuzzy lines on the handout from last month. The Everyday Hero’s Contest, submit a photo of yourself or someone you know doing something heroic, however mundane or fantastical. But there’s no firefighters rushing into burning buildings or strangers performing random acts of kindness on the street, and even if there were it isn’t like someone else hasn’t already done that idea, far better than she ever could.

“I’ll, uh, have to think about it.” Max tells him, because he’s not just her teacher and how can she shut down the hope her mentor has for her?

He nods in acceptance, and Victoria is still there listening. She doesn’t look mad anymore, but Max can’t seem to look at her either and turns to the door, quick to escape into the halls of her high school.

Everyone’s out and about, grabbing things from lockers and talking with their friends. Max moves to the side, jamming her earbuds in and leaning against the wall.

Something happened in the classroom.  A second sight or third eye moment of warning, shaking Max to another place and telling her to fix it. There’s a fear climbing through her gut, and she looks across the hall to see Victoria’s minions obviously making fun of her, poking and smiling with clear mockery.

She can’t hear what they’re saying, but the embarrassment has her pushing off the wall and walking down the hallway.

 _I should’ve said hi to Kate_.

She walks past the other students. Max sees Brooke in front of her locker, eyes glued on her phone, and Max slows down. No words make it out, but Brooke glances up at her.

“Hey.” She says. But Max doesn’t stop walking.

“Bathroom.” Is her reply, and her steps take her to the girl’s room and her hands are shaking as she takes the earbuds outs and goes for the sink.

Her skin is dry, and her clothes are clean. It feels bizarre but she clearly remembers waking up and getting dressed and going into class like that. Nothing happened in between.

_Except the vision where a hurricane destroys the town._

Max turns on the sink and holds her hands under the water, bringing up a cup to rinse her face. It’s as harsh as the rain but doesn’t smell like dirt. She closes her eyes and crouches down, hands on the rim of the sink and wet forehead pressed against the ceramic.

There’s a buzz from her jean’s pocket. Her cell. She ignores it, breathing and staying still for a minute before standing up.

There’s a butterfly on the faucet. Max blinks and stops.

(rip off its wings, one by one, pull it apart—)

She can picture reaching out and crushing it in her hands, but instead Max takes out her camera, and when the butterfly stays where it is, she takes the photo.

It’s a brilliant blue, memorizing, and Max leans down to take a second shot. Its wings flap, rising over the sink and flying to a different corner of the room.

“What…?” Max says, head tilted towards where the butterfly hovered in the air, completely frozen.

“It,” Max looks back to the sink. The water from the faucet had gone still too. “Stopped?”

But it’s not those things that scare her. Like the rain and the wind that wasn’t there, she hears the loud blast, cracking in the air of the small room. A gun going off. Someone shot.

Someone with blue hair. They fall like the butterfly flew. Going down, and the shooter is red—dressed in, covered in—and the gun is gone from their hand and Max sees it all.

There’s no one in the bathroom. She’s alone. Max looks over to the butterfly, flapping and trying to find somewhere to go.

She ends up in the opposite corner of the bathroom, clutching her camera to her chest while listening to the kid in red shoot the someone with blue hair.

Max is back at her desk. The photo of herself replaces the camera in her hands.

Stella drops her pencil on the ground. Victoria ignores her phone buzzing beside her.

_Fuck._

Max can’t fight the stillness. She pushes away from the desk and stands up. The class goes silent as everyone’s eyes turn toward her.

 “Max?” Mr. Jefferson asks in concern, but she can’t see his face. Instead she holds out a hand, except _no_ wait, it’s her right hand, not left. She holds out her _right_ hand and feels the bubble around her form, sees the world go in reverse and take her back to moments before. She sits down before times goes forward and waits.

Stella reaches down to grab her pencil. Victoria’s cell vibrates. Max can hear the ticking of the clock across the room.

She looks at her camera on the table. And pushes it off. 

“Max?” Mr. Jefferson’s voice reaches her. She holds up her hand.

The broken camera rewinds until its back on her table and not broken.

(just like before, just like all the ones before—)

Max waits. She leaves her camera on the table and doesn’t take a picture of herself.

 _I can save her. I have to_.

But Mr. Jefferson picks on her despite Victoria’s hand in the air. It’s not the same question either.

“Victoria probably knows.” She says, and can feel her skin crawl. He’s asking about material they hadn’t covered yet. Pages ahead of where she remembers reading to the night before.

“We’ll speak after class.” He says, sounding disappointed and tired. Max shrinks back in her seat and stares at her hand.

The sound of the gunshot is still ringing in her ears. She doesn’t feel good. Max glances up just to see Victoria’s head turn away from her.

The bell rings and Max gathers her things. Her camera’s safe. Suddenly she looks over to Kate.

“Hey Kate, how’re you doing?” Max asks, crouching down so she can lean her arms at the edge of the table. Kate wasn’t paying any attention to the class. Max could see the dark circles under her eyes, the still constant lack of smile that’s been on her face for the last couple weeks.

“I’m just… tired. Hard to focus today.” Kate says. Max nods, taking it at face value. There might be more but she has something else to focus on at the moment.

“You want to get tea later? We can groan about this stupid contest and how Victoria’s going to win it without trying.”

“I’ll see.” Kate says, “That sounds nice, but I have a lot of homework.”

“Let me know.”

“Sure.”

Max gets up and looks to where Mr. Jefferson stands at the front of his desk, Victoria only a foot away from him with a folder in her hand.

“I know you can do better than this,” Mr. Jefferson says to her, “I used to be your age, I get it, but you need to do you work,” He goes on, and Max doesn’t know how to feel angry, “Speaking of work, your submission…”

Victoria huffs impatiently and Max hates herself even more. “No, there’s nothing I… I don’t have anything good enough to enter with.”

She cares about the contest, but she doesn’t want to enter. Either way, she’ll regret it, but she almost wants to rip the photo she had chosen out of her bag and throw it at Mr. Jefferson. Maybe she should give it to Victoria, so she could rip it up for her.

_Does she know about Nathan?_

The kid, the shooter, in red. Nathan is the one in the bathroom, the one with the gun.

Max can’t ask her. Victoria wouldn’t tell her if she knew anyway.

Mr. Jefferson looks at her with disapproval. He understands because of course he understands her hesitance and excuses. But she’s glad anyway, ashamed and glad, and she leaves the room to the hallway and takes out her cell.

* _Have you seen Nathan recently?_

She hits sends and speed walks down the hall. Dana smiles as she passes by and Brooke doesn’t look up this time.

* _I was in class with him._

* _Why are you looking for Nathan?_

The cell’s back in her pocket, and Max goes into the bathroom and waits for the butterfly.

She spots it through the mirror, somewhere behind her. It's perched atop one of the stalls, unmoving. She turns around. Gone.

_What do I do?_

Max doesn’t have a plan. She can rewind, but how exactly does that help stop Nathan from shooting someone? It’ll just happen again. She could try to get between them. But he might shoot her. Will rewinding take the bullet out?

She looks around the room, minutes ticking by. There’s nothing she could use except the janitor’s bin left in the corner. In it is one mop and a yellow caution sign. Her eyes land on the fire alarm at the wall next to it.

Nathan’s in the bathroom, dressed in red but not covered in. The someone with blue hair follows. There’s yelling. Demanding money. Pushing. Nathan pulls out a gun.

“Get that gun away from me—”

Max breaks the glass of the fire alarm. With a hammer. She found it in the janitor bin.

(it’s there because she needs it, he left it there because he was told to, he felt it and he knew, that’s what he said—)

Blaring. _WEop WEop WEop_. Someone with blue hair’s gone. Nathan’s gone too. Max watches the butterfly go out the window.

It’s familiar in an unfamiliar way. The alarm keeps going and Max stands there. She still has the hammer in her hands. What does she do with the hammer? She walks over to the fire alarm, glass on the ground and wipes the hammer down with her shirt before putting it back in the bin.

The security guard spots her and charges over.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Max wants to step away but doesn’t know how. The security guard is a tall white man with a mustache and an awful glare. She also knows he loves to catch students in trouble.

“I was mid pee when the alarm sounded.” Max blurts, flustered and hand halfway up.

“Mr. Madsen!”

She finds herself before the principal. Wells. He asks to make sure she’s okay. She’s not. She’s so not.

“I’m worried about my future…” Max says, and Principal Wells lifts an eyebrow at her.

 _It doesn’t matter what I tell him_.

“Did something happen…?” Principal Wells asks, sounding concerned. Max wants to shake her head, but realizes her whole body’s shivering. Shaking. Static slowly spreading through her.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” It’s so unconvincing. But she’s been invisible here so far, no need to draw attention to herself. Principal Wells nods at her and lets her go, frowning and waiting until she disappears out the front doors.

Outside she collapses on the school steps. A bunch of other students are spread out on the campus. Teachers doing headcounts. Checking off their lists. She’s afraid of being pointed out and forces herself to her feet, pushing towards the others.

 _Wait_.

She gets in line before holding up her right hand. The bubble forms and pulls the rest of the world backwards.

“Has anyone seen Max Caulfield?”

Max raises her arm up and gets counted. She relaxes right away and waits with everyone else.

“I didn’t see any smoke.”

“Didn’t we have a drill last week?”

“It’s a false alarm.”

One of the teachers offers to bring students back to the dorms. Max stays with a handful in front of the school. When she gets the chance she takes a seat at the water fountain.

_What am I?_

Her phone buzzes.

_*Where are you?_

She stares at the screen, looking at the name of the texter. The letters of the name change; she counts six, then four. They roll likes numbers for a slot machine, but empty. L-U-K-E.

* _In front of the school @fountain, where are you?_

Her response is automatic. She keeps her phone in her hands and leans her elbows on her knees.

* _I went to the dorms. Heading back stay there._

Luke is fun and bitter and sitting next to her in a few minutes. He’s the kind of friend Max knew even after only a couple of weeks she’s lucky to have.

“How’s it go, Ax?” He asks while staring at his phone. Max is quiet and so is Luke but he’s not the quiet that let’s questions go unanswered.

“Why were you looking for Nathan before?”

(it’s not nathan she’s looking for, he’s not her problem, not ever, not even when he begs for her help—)

“He has a gun.” Max says, voice so low and afraid anyone else would hear it. Luke’s eyelids stretch out and he grips the edge of the fountain with one hand, his phone lowered to his knee.

“What?” Luke whispers back, shocked anger trailing in his voice. “Is that why the alarm was pulled? Did you pull it?”

Max shakes her eyes with closed eyes, because a half truth is still a lie, and she doesn’t want to confess.

“No. And I didn’t tell Principal Wells.”

She’s being judged. Hard. But it doesn’t outweigh the sound of the bullet in the air, the blast echoing in the bathroom.

“Why not? Are… did he threaten you?”

She says no, and Luke leans closer to her.

“C’mon, we’ll go together. You have to report him.”

Max resists the impulse to raise her hand. She needed Luke to know. She couldn’t do this alone.

“You really think the principal’s going to do anything about Nathan?”

“Well he _definitely_ won’t if he doesn’t know anything. Max,” Luke says, “I’ll be there with you.”

Max knows where this road takes her. She’s been here before, she’s sure. And so she nods to Luke and stands up from the fountain with him.

With a sigh, she says, “Time to be an everyday hero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback welcome


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm honestly surprised i wrote this.

The beginning is always the easiest place to start. But Max can’t start at the beginning. She can’t start with the one in red killing someone with blue hair, the fired gun, or her right-hand magic.

She can’t start with the end either, with a hurricane that’s not real until it’s there. That’s bigger than the town but is somehow missed until that morning.

She certainly can’t start with what she can’t remember—like repeating lives and nosebleeds, reaching out with one hand, while covering her mouth with the other.

(there’s too many places to be, and she’s everywhere, and she has to go back—)

In front of her is Principal Wells, and to her right is Luke Parker. She’s still in her chair, looking at Principal Wells, who is old enough and tired in a way Max wished she couldn’t relate to. His questions are hounding, and she regrets agreeing to report Nathan the moment she sits down.

Max isn’t the best liar but it’s easy to lie about the butterfly. She watches Principal Wells’ hands twitch on top of his desk, and she tells him about Nathan and the bathroom and talking to himself with a gun in hand.

But was it really Nathan, he asks her.

But was there really a gun, he asks her.

But why didn’t anyone else see him go in and out of the girl’s bathroom, he asks her.

Luke sits in the other chair, silent for the most part. He doesn’t have much to say because he wasn’t there, but the principal lets him stay because Luke mentioned that Max wasn’t going to tell on Nathan, afraid that Principal Wells wouldn’t believe her.

(there’s the dressed in red striding her way, hand on her neck and her fingernails in his face—)

“No, no,” And Principal Wells backtracks, pulling his collar and trying not to be obvious. “But I do want to make sure the facts are in order. Accusing anyone of bringing a gun to school is very serious. That it’s Mr. Prescott…”

Max wants to rewind. The guilt is gnawing at her for saying anything. Nathan’s a bully, but she doesn’t know him well enough to think he’d bring a gun to school.

_I already saved her. This shouldn’t matter._

But Max still hears the bang of the bullet and shivers in her seat. That happened. She didn’t stop the shooting. It could happen again. It could be happening _now_.

“I swear he had a gun. It’s not _my_ fault he went into the girl’s room.” It’s not better. She still feels like she’s on trial. Principal Wells stares her down before clearing his throat.

“I promise I’ll look into this. I don’t want my students to feel unsafe at this school. I know this was hard to do, but thank you for telling me, Max.”

(she’s digging through the ground, an awful, awful smell hits her and it’s dark and it’s bloody and—)

Max and Luke walk out of the principal’s office and listen as the intercom calls for David Madsen.

“It’ll be great to see that kid get what’s coming to him.” Luke says with a biting smile.

“I can’t believe he brought a gun to school.” Max’s voice is loud in the empty halls. She looks across to the bathroom door across the way before following Luke back to the front of the building.

“I can.” Luke says. He has his phone out again and types quickly. “Wonder what the Vortex Club’s going to think of their little star getting booted from the school.”

“You think he’ll be expelled?” Max asks.

Luke stops tapping at his phone and meets Max’s eyes. In the weeks she’s known him, Luke’s only ever utterly cheerful or righteously pissed off. He looks now like he’s confused as he considers the question.

“Shit.” He says then, and his faces scrunches up. “I mean, he brought a _gun_. If this doesn’t get him out I should just transfer myself.”

Max reaches to her head, feeling an ache building up between her temples. They walk down the steps and a breeze goes by and papers on the ground lift up and scatter.

Max knows to catch one and with a papercut on her hand, she does.

“Another missing person’s poster? Those have really been popping up since school started.” Luke says, but he’s hardly looking at the paper. It’s of little interest to him, or what interest he had went away from seeing it all around campus.

Max remembers when she saw one a couple days after arriving at Blackwell. After a couple more she brought one to her room. It’s on a girl named Rachel Amber. The picture’s black and white but the description says she has blond hair and hazel eyes. Two tattoos. White skin. A year older than Max. Missing since the end of April.

Max fingers tingle where she’s holding the paper, the sound of rain hitting the ground close to her ears, but she looks around and sees no clouds.

“She’s pretty.” Max murmurs. Still staring at the picture. Rereading the sentences. There’s a feather hanging on Rachel’s left ear. Her hair is long.

“Yeah? She was pretty popular last year. Maybe the year before that too.” Luke said, offhandedly, like it made little difference. And it made little. Popular or not, she was missing _now_.

Max felt like she knew her. Which made no sense. The last time she lived in Arcadia Bay was five years ago, and she’s only been back for a month. A lot of the students at Blackwell came from out of town. And the one person Max knew didn’t go to this school.

(there were others before, friends that could only be friends in spaces that didn’t exist, and she called her—)

“Ax?” Luke repeats. Max folds the paper in her hands and stuffs it into her pocket without thinking.

“Come on.” He motions for her, and Max sees Brooke taking her drone out from the box in her backpack. She follows, follows in small steps and thinks about Brooke greeting her in the hallway, and then not after the rewind.

Luke hugs Brooke with both arms and the drone’s in the air. Max lays on the ground with her legs drawn up, arms folded behind her head.

“He brought a what?” Brooke’s voice is low, but she looks at Luke in alarm as he tells her. She passes her controller to Luke—he’s the only one Max’s seen drive it besides Brooke—and gets down to Max’s level.

“Are you all right?” She asks, caring and concerned and Max wonders why Luke told her.

“Not… really.” Max answers. She watches the sky, clearly blue with white clouds strolling along like leaves down a river. Yet the electricity hangs overhead, lifting goosebumps on Max’s skin with the passing breeze.

“Principal Wells said he’s going to look into it.” She says. If her hands weren’t behind her head, they’d be shaking.

Eventually, Max says, “Brooke, you know science, right?”

(standing in the corner, quiet and dismissive when she comes over, and why would he ask her for help, he who—)

The drone flies above Max. Brooke glances down at her.

“That’s a vague question.” She says, and she’s sitting next to Max and watching Luke play with her controller. “I’m good with robotics.”

Max can still feel the raindrops, but she can’t shake them off. She can still hear the gun too, can feel it like the bullet was in her own stomach.

 _Stop it. You_ saved _her._

Brooke waits and waits and Max has to rewind a few times to keep it from being awkward silence.

It scraps at her temples with each pull backwards, raw and wrong and yet hers to use as much as she could.

“What kind of science is time travel?”

The drone is across the front building. Luke is watching one of the skaters do a noseslide through its camera.

Max hears Brooke laugh.

“Depends on who you ask.” She says. “And how you define time. Is it an illusion? Does it move at the same speed everywhere? That kind of thing. I would say it’s definitely physics.”

Max is sitting up, lifting her hand at the wrist and watching it while Brooke talked. She could feel the edge of time in her reach.

“I think I went back in time earlier.”

Luke’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he moves the drone to fly back their way. It trails low to the ground but always picks back up after few seconds. The sun gleams light on its shell.

“What do you mean?” Brooke asks, and she asks with a serious voice, and Max feels curious because she’s not even sure if they’re friends, or if Brooke likes her. Does she like Brooke? She’s kind of like Luke, except without the constant texting. And she wears glasses, unlike Luke, but she’s cute with them.

(she talks about superpowers and weather patterns and everything’s loud, but max can’t talk back, can’t stop to tell her that it’s true, there’s no time—)

“I’ve just had this… really weird déjà vu feeling today.” Max says with electricity on her skin. “And I mean… I think I actually… I saved someone.”

She talks about the someone with blue hair, the way Nathan had pulled out his gun, the frantic yell before it went off and Max reaching out with her hand.

There’s goosebumps visible on Brooke’s arms. Luke brings the drone down without turning it off and looks at Max.

“That’s not funny.” He says. “I’m not saying it’s not true, but please don’t say something like that if it’s not true.”

Max opens her bag and pulls out her camera. She looks up to Luke and Brooke.

“Smile.”

She hits the button, and the flash has the pair blinking their eyes. Then she lifts her hand and she feels the bubble separate her from the world, like getting out a pool. She had been swimming and it was nice, but she could never stay in the water forever.

“That’s not funny.” Luke says the same thing in the same way, but it still sounds different to Max. She’s still holding her camera and the photo from the future. She gets up and hands it to Luke.

“What is it?” Brooke goes to see the photo. They look at it together, and Brooke asks her when she took it.

“Technically I never did. Not in this time.” Max feels weary and the wind picks up around her. The photo in Luke’s hands doesn’t flutter in his fingers.

He stares down at the photo with wordless judgement.

“You didn’t photoshop this?” Brooke asks, impressed or agitated, Max can’t tell. She plucks the photo from Luke and gives it a hard look, glancing back up to Max afterwards.

“When did it… start?” Brooke asks.

“Today.”

_When did today start? How long ago?_

Luke still eyes the photo in Brooke’s hands before looking to Max’s camera.

“Can I see your camera?”

Max scrunches her face in confusion but hands it over. Turning it over in his hands, Luke checks each side of the camera before pointing it at his face.

“I’ll buy you another one.”

For the second time that day Max looks down at her camera in pieces on the ground. Luke looked guilty, but that hadn’t stopped him from hurling her equipment, and he holds out the picture he took to Max.

“I can’t doubt you’re telling the truth. I need you to show me.”

Max takes the photo, the image of a solemn looking boy printed on the film. She doesn’t bother waiting and tugs time back again, a lurch hitting from behind her forehead that makes her think she’s about to be nauseous, but the feeling never settles in.

She’s out of the bubble, Luke’s selfie in her hand, and her camera saved again.

“You don’t need to buy me another one.” Max says, turning the photo to Luke. Brooke leans in to look.

“Holy shit.” Luke says, and his hand reaches to land on Brooke’s shoulder. “I believe her, Brooke.”

Max blinks, the world growing bright, too bright, and it’s something flashing over her eyes.

The wind comes and Luke’s photo rips from Max’s hand.

“Shit!” She says, and Luke is up on his feet and taking off after it.

“Got it.”

The brightness leaves. Brooke has her arms crossed.

“How did this happen?”

(because of her, what she did, trying to save those cursed by death, but _why_ give her control then get mad at her for taking—)

“I don’t know.” Max says, and she closes her eyes, feeling the weight of worlds forgotten resting on her shoulders. “I think… I need to find out this time.”

She looks to Brooke. Luke joins them again, his photo in hand. Max shifts her gaze between the two and tries to keep herself there, in the present.

“Will you help me?”

Brooke’s frown deepens, but she’s nodding and saying okay and Luke manages a weak smile.

The wind blows Max’s hair back, and everything feels new again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? gush with me.
> 
> there might be more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now there's more

There are more missing person posters on every billboard in the girl’s dorm. Max has gotten used to them over the last month she’s been at Blackwell, but now she’s noticed most of the posters have been replaced. Each one that had become worn from being handled or defaced or ripped are now crisp and smooth as the first day she had seen them.

Rachel Amber, last seen the last Monday of last April. She had been wearing a blue blouse with a white shirt and black jeans. She has a star tattoo on the inside of her wrist, and a dragon tattoo on her calf.

There is a painful ache in Max’s chest, feeling a curious longing to know where this girl had gone too. Despite the popularity of the posters, she hasn’t heard too many of her classmates talk about her. Even Luke sounded bored when he saw Max holding one of the posters.

Max turns and sees the door to Kate’s room, the small square whiteboard hung just outside where anyone could write on so long as they had a marker. It reads too horrifying to repeat, and the drop in Max’s stomach falls even further. She knows Kate didn’t write it because the words are cruel and meant to shame. She walks over and rubs her hand over the black marks and takes the marker from the ledge, drawing a peace sign as big as she can fit on the board.

It’s about the video. The one of Kate taken as a Vortex Club party a couple weeks ago. Max hadn’t seen it, but the rumors ran like a wildfire.

She hasn’t talked to Kate about any of it.

There’s black ink on her fingers and Max wipes them on her hoodie. It’s a smear that stains the grey fabric. Max sighs and rewinds but the smudge is still there.

Her dorm room is after Kate’s on the opposite side of the hallway. The whiteboard next to her door is blank. Max grabs her marker and draws a spiral a few layers long, placing a small closed circle near the end of the line.

Inside her room she has a guitar with flowers painted on the body underneath the bridge. Her bed is made, and on the wall just above is her whole series of polaroid pictures.

There are a few shots of Seattle, where she lived before moving back to Arcadia Bay. She has photos of her old friends, Kristen and Fernando. She doesn’t remember the last time she talked to either of them.

Most of the photos are without people and empty, maybe. There’s one of a dog on a leash, pulling a little hard and straining the collar at its neck. Another of a foggy day she had gone out to take a picture of the lost road, unintentionally grabbing the incoming lights of a car.

Most are like that, of animals and places on the side. Nothing in the center, nothing knowing she was there.

Max trembles and sits down on her bed, feeling the wind sweep past her aggressively. Between blinks her room is gone and it’s the storm and the hurricane and she’s sitting on a bench of wet wood watching it happen.

There’s a hand on her shoulder. It tugs her back, and she sees blue hair.

“Max?”

The wind’s swirling over her. Max holds harder to the bench, her knuckles going white.

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

Max feels horrified, her mouth opening and closing until she looks at the someone with blue hair, knowing she knows her, and briefly pictures a reaper of death standing behind her, its scythe posed to take her at a moment’s notice.

“No,”—Max reaches up to take blue’s hand in her own—“That doesn’t make sense. You’re not… it doesn’t work like that.”

Her door opens and Brooke is walking inside with a small stack of books. She’s eyeing Max with suspicious curiosity, taking a place on Max’s couch and dropping the books beside her.

“I’m, uh,” Max pauses, seeing the blue hair between blinks. “In the future.”

The wind scatters the loose papers in her room, and Max starts until she sees Brooke on her phone and none of the papers had moved from their spot.

“Luke says Nathan looked pissed when he left Wells’ office.” Brooke says, glancing up from her phone and its light making her look prettier than usual. “Said he went in the direction of the parking lot.”

The wind is growing distance. Max tightens her hand around blue’s and looks her in the eyes.

“I’ll figure it out, okay? Don’t give up on me.”

Max doesn’t stay long enough to hear the reply, but the wind and the one with blue hair are gone.

She looks to Brooke, shaky but present, and asks, “What just happened?”

Being in two places at once should’ve been disorientating, but Max adjusted to it quickly. It was a feeling she recognized, feeling settled and _there_ while also existing in two times separate from each other.

 “Actually,” Brooke says, coming out of her own daze as she peers over her phone, “Now that you mention it – I couldn’t really look at you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

Rubbing her eyes, Brooke puts her phone screen down on the floor. “You said you were in the future. What did you mean by that?”

Max doesn’t know how to explain, but she tries.

(the lighthouse breaks above her, crumbling, and the deer shows her when to run—)

“I was… I _am_ here, I’m present,” Max says, “but also, I’m somewhere else? I’m in another time, another place, all at once. It’s like there’s more than one of me existing in the same body, managing to be in different places of time at the same time.”

Brooke nods like she gets it. Max doesn’t know if she does but there’s no reason for her to ask.

“I brought some of these, figured it’d be somewhere to start.” Brooke is looking at the stack of books she put down. Max tries to ignore the bubbling in her stomach at the way Brooke changes topics.

“You had these in your room?” Max asked, eyes flittering over the various titles. They were books on higher dimensions and parallels worlds and spacetime.

“No, I—” Brooke stops, “I got these from Alyssa.”

The silence falls upon them like a lighthouse being hit by a boat. Brooke’s hands hover over the one of the books with hesitation, as though feeling how uncomfortable it was to be alone in the same room as Max.

Brooke has never been in Max’s room before today. In fact, this was only the second time they’ve been alone without Luke acting as a buffer. Considering they lived only two rooms away from each other, that was probably saying something. 

(they didn’t talk much back then either, nothing that mattered, and max still feels invisible in her eyes—)

“So how do you do it?” Brooke breaks the silence, and she’s _looking_ at Max now, and Max reaches out her right hand to her. Brooke hesitates again before she grabs Max’s hand with both of hers, brushing her thumbs along the lines on Max’s palms.

“I just have to hold it up and think about going back.” Max murmurs, her heart skipping before she’s narrowing her eyes. Why is she so sure of that?

“Does it have to be this hand?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah? How do you know; have you tried using your left? Or not using your hands at all?”

Max pauses, the confidence from her previous answer wavering. She lifts her left hand and feels for the time in the air.

“I can feel it.” Max says before looking to her other hand still held by both of Brooke’s.  Brooke lets go without prompting and Max touches the feeling of time before her.

It doesn’t work. Max doesn’t know why. Brooke nods at the information but she doesn’t know what to do with it either.

“Sorry.” Brooke says then, head ducked away and Max feels her insides twist with worry, waiting for Brooke to call her an idiot for thinking time travel was real and bolt back out the door.

Instead, Brooke picks up one of the books and flips to the index at the front.

“Time travel has always been like… a myth. There are so many theories of if it's possible, then how would it work? We just got to figure out which is closest to what you experience.”

“Uh…”

“What?”

“I never thought about it before.”

Brooke’s hand comes to a halt where she’s skimming. Max wants to fiddle with her hands and barely manages to resist the urge. Time brushes her fingertips and Max lets go before the bubble around her encloses.

The air glimmers. Max grabs the next book from the stack. 

It’s a lie. Mas has tried to work out her powers before, she’s sure of it. It never made sense, never lead anywhere.

“Of course, I doubt any of these books are going to talk about how raising a hand makes you travel back in time.” Brooke says, and the words sound like defeat but she’s still looking through the pages. 

Max flips through the book she’s holding, waiting for something to catch her eye.

“It happened first when I wanted to save that girl in the bathroom. She was like the trigger.”

Brooke turns her head. “Emotion is energy. Why the hell not? But still doesn’t explain _how_ it happened. Did you know her?”

Max can feel her heart beating faster in her chest as she thinks. She doesn’t know her. But she must be a student, though Max has no idea how she never saw her before.

“No. But she needed help. The gun went off before I even tried anything. I just, I was reaching before I could even think of what to do next.”

Max smooths out the page she landed on, looking at the chapter’s title in the corner of the page.

_Parallel Universes._

She scrunches her eyes and reads downwards. Minutes go by as she goes through the section, reading it a couple more times before turning the page. It’s not the same as time travel, but it’s about it somehow. Max thinks about the bubble that wraps around her when she rewinds. The idea of dimensions, the way reality could change if you could just see the ripples and step through. There was a connection.

“What about before - you said you were in the future? Is it like a vision?”

Time can only go backwards, says the book Brooke’s holding. If time travel were possible, the only thing set in stone would be that people could visit the past. It’s the future that is unreachable.

(she’s there, the one in blue, holding out the photo and begging her to end it, she doesn’t want to die, but she doesn’t deserve to live—)

Max wants to talk about the vision. The hurricane coming for the town. It would be on Friday, four days from now. She never heard anyone talking about one coming. Don’t they have warnings in advance for these things?

“She was there.” Max says, and she sniffs because she remembers holding the photo, she remembers the butterfly, and she remembers the gunshot.

“The girl from the bathroom?” Brooke sounds surprised. “Maybe she has powers too? If you were around when she was shot, maybe like, she reached out to you and you got her rewind powers? And that’s why you’re able to do it so suddenly. I think that makes sense. Ugh, this is going to give me such a headache.”

Someone in blue covered in red. Falling. Nathan doesn’t hear Max yell. Her hand is up.

“She has blue hair.” Max says to herself, trying to forget the red. Red on her stomach. Red on his jacket. Blood on her hands.

“Wait,” Brooke words sound louder than usual, and Max remembers the time she’s in. “Like bright blue hair?”

 _She’s real._ Max thinks with relief. “Yeah. Do you have class with her?”

“Not anymore. She was expelled two years ago.”

It hadn’t occurred to Max until that moment that she needs to see her. She’s clearly connected to Max’s new powers, but more than that Max just wants to give her a hug and ask her if she’s okay.

“Considering her reputation, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised it was Chloe of all people—”

Chloe. The someone in blue. Bright blue hair. Chloe. _Her_ Chloe? Asking her to go back, blaming herself for what happened, tears down her face as she tries to be brave while sacrificing herself.

“S-she… Chloe? Price, Chloe Price?” The words can’t leave her lips fast enough, and Max doesn’t care anymore _how_ she got her powers.

Brooke is clearly thrown. She’s not used to Max being so loud or acting so frantic. Max is standing up, and Brooke follows to her feet.

“Yeah, Chloe Price. Why, do you—?”

Max’s hand slides down to her jean’s pocket, with the folded-up poster of Rachel Amber. It feels like its humming through her clothes.

“I know her. She’s my…” And Max falters like the timelines she can’t remember. She shakes her head. “I need to see her. Do you have her number?”

Brooke grabs her phone from the floor and searches through it.

“We used to play dungeons and dragons together a few years ago. I don’t know if it’s the same number, but here.”

Max’s first instinct is to call, but she freezes in place. It’s been five years since she’s seen or talked to Chloe. Would she be mad at her after all this time, never once getting back to her after she moved out of town?

With shaking fingers, she types on the keyboard instead.

_*I know what happened in the bathroom with Nathan. We need to meet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i guess this is a thing now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one! month! later!

Her entire world sits on the steps of the lighthouse. Blue hair peeks out from under a darker blue beanie. It’s Chloe Price. She has a lit cigarette in her mouth, a quarter already gone, and a dust of ash on the left knee of her jeans. Max wonders at what age she picked up the habit.

Chloe hasn’t seen her yet. She’s staring at the screen of her phone, her ash-less knee bouncing off the dirt at the bottom of the steps. Max drums fingers against her camera. There’s a knot in her stomach that tries to warn her but she can’t resist the image.

The flash has Chloe looking up from her phone. She’s on her feet with her hand reaching behind her back, and then she’s staring at Max with her mouth open and frozen in place.

“Max?” Chloe says.

Max takes the printed polaroid from her camera. She can’t look at Chloe. She can’t stop looking at Chloe.

(she’s on her feet and at the cliff’s edge, talking about destiny and bombs of glass, but all max catches in the wind and water hurling through the sky—)

Chloe’s just outside her bubble of space now, closer but not quite in front of her, her cigarette discarded somewhere behind her. Her expression wobbles, eyes soft and fierce and Max is too afraid to guess the meanings behind them.

“You’re the one that sent the message earlier?” Chloe asks, shoulders pulled up and hands in loose fists. Max nods, and in the next moment Chloe eases back, her brows still furrowed as she studies Max’s face for a beat.

“Well that was cryptic as fuck.” She says, and it was. Max fiddles with the corner of the photo she has of Chloe, watches Chloe’s eyes glance down at it.

“I didn’t think you would want to see me if you… knew it was me.”

There’s a sigh, and Chloe’s favors leaning back on one leg over the other.

“That’s interesting. _Why_ would you think that exactly?”

Someone in blue talked to her in terror in Max’s vision, and that someone is the same someone standing before her now. But Chloe’s angry at Max, rightfully so, and Max knows. It still tilts her sideways.

Time grazes her fingertips, and Max wonders how she could make a better impression. Don’t take the photo. Say sorry before anything else. She could do it so easily, pull back time until Chloe was back on the steps, not knowing she was there yet, still smoking and staring at her phone.

Max’s mouth opens, knowing there’s no excuse she can give that Chloe would believe.

“Because I ditched you for Seattle. I mean, I didn’t. I didn’t choose to leave when I did, but I left you anyway. And then I should’ve called, but I didn’t. I did want to…”

Chloe is looking at the ground beneath them. Her thumbs hook into her pockets and she digs the tip of her boot in the dirt.

“And how long have you been back?”

There’s no good answer, and Max relaxes her hand around the time she wanted to pull back.

“I moved into the dorms just before school started.” She says, seeing the knowledge sink into Chloe’s expression by the way her jaw tightens.

“Great.” Chloe says. Arms crossed in front of her now. “Glad you’ve settled into Blackhell Academy.”

The gunshot is a far-off sound, but Max still recalls it. Chloe had been shot, and Max had saved her.

And in her vision to the future, Chloe begged Max to let her die.

 _I can still save her._ Max licks her lips, willing the tears behind her eyes to stay there.

“I’m sorry, Chloe.” She says, swallowing her worry back as she faces the silence. Chloe, still arms crossed, draws them up in a sigh and lets them fall.

“So what exactly do you know about Nathan?” She asks, and Max tries to put her thoughts in order.

(chloe talks her through it all, the drink and the busted lamp and what almost happened in his room, she would’ve been next—)

Shit. Old anger swims under her skin. Max flinches as she pinches her bottom lip too hard with her teeth.

“I saw him earlier. Before. In the bathroom.” Max says, the words sounding overused and practiced. She’s explained herself too many times before. “With the gun.”

Chloe stares. Her eyes blow wide. It’s seconds before she has it worked out.

“You pulled the fire alarm.” She breathes through her lips, and she sounds… amazed? Scared? Her voice peaks up and she steps forward, and her hand is up and pressing to Max’s shoulder. Max jolts at the touch and Chloe pulls back.

“Sorry, uh...” Chloe hesitates, hand hanging in the air before her fingers curl back together. Max shakes her head, realizing how it might look.

“No, it’s not you. I’m still a little freaked out from earlier.” More than anything she wants to envelop Chloe in a hug, but she can’t imagine that’s something Chloe would want right now.

“You and me both.” Chloe says, pacing a few feet away. Putting more distance between them. She chuckles and her voice shakes.

“You saved my life today.” She says in disbelief. Max tucks her photo into her bag, pressed safely inside so the weight of her camera wouldn’t bend it.

“Yeah.” Max says, holding her hands together in front of her. The sun is sinking past the cliff’s edge, burning its orange across the rest of the sky.

“Come on,” Chloe says, motioning forward with her hand, “Let’s sit.”

She leads without looking back, plopping down on the bench overlooking the bay. Chloe brings up a leg and wraps her arms and draws it close, leaning her chin on her knee. Max sits down, leaving an obvious space between the two of them.

“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?” Chloe asks without looking at her. Max’s first instinct is _of course_ , but she remembers Luke convincing her. Sitting in Principal’s Wells’ office and telling the version of events that didn’t involve reversing time.

“He has a gun, Chloe.” Max blinks and explains and sees the same Chloe before her on the ground in the bathroom, red on her stomach, red on the floor. Because Nathan _pulled_ the trigger.

“Fuck, Max, this is serious.” Chloe says, holding her leg harder and glaring. “Who did you tell?”

Max doesn’t look away.

“I told the Principal, but I didn’t mention you.” Max feels the need to confess everything bubbling up inside her. But her words catch Chloe, whose brows twist up and hesitates.

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that Nathan had a gun, not that he believed me anyway.” Max says with a sigh, “It was forty minutes of him asking me different versions of ‘are you sure that’s what you saw’?”

Chloe makes a “tch” sound, facing ahead before closing her eyes quickly when she looks right into the sun.

“Well… thanks.” She rubs her eyes, and Max can’t fight the smile. Chloe’s presses further before flinching, a hiss slipping from her lips.

“Is he the only one you told?” Chloe asks. She’s staring down at her hand and Max looks down to her own.

“No.” She says, and even after five years she still can’t lie to Chloe.

“My friend Luke convinced me to tell the Principal,” Max is leaning forward the moment she sees the roll of Chloe’s eyes, the exaggeration of her head shaking in disagreement. “And he was right. Chloe… what if Nathan keeps coming after you? He could”—he _does_ , she nearly vomits the words out—“shoot you, for real.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.” Chloe’s voice is tight, her hands holding the edge of the bench as she gives Max a look. Five years of no talking, no calling, nothing. Max doesn’t have the right to worry and yet.

And yet she does.

“Of course I worry.” Max says, and she wants to reassure Chloe but the words clamp down like dry air in her throat. She doesn’t know what she can say to make it better, and the anxiety coils round and round in her stomach.

“Yeah, you really blew up my phone with how much you were worried about me.” Chloe pauses, “But you’ve been gone for five years, so let me fill you in: Nathan’s daddy owns the town, or enough of it. I thought I could use that to my advantage, but it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about something going my way.”

Max remembers, though this Chloe never told her. So she has to ask, “What did you think you could use to your advantage?”

Chloe is quiet. Max wants to lean over and wrap an arm over her shoulders, but holds back. She looks at Chloe fiddling her fingers together, somehow pulling inward on herself as she lets the silence linger.

“I thought he was just being an idiot.” Chloe says, “I needed cash and he… anyway, we ended up back at his dorm, and we were drinking. He must’ve put something in my drink cause I passed out. When I woke up he was over me, taking pictures and smiling like he was having the time of his life.”

“You were blackmailing him?” Max asks slowly, trying to settle the anger sparking inside her. She knows her arms are shaking at her sides, and she needs to take a long breath through her nose to calm down.

Chloe misunderstood though, turning her eyes with heat at Max. She’s squared her shoulders and lifts her head. For the first time Max finds her eyes drawn to the necklace hanging from her neck, and at the base of the black chord hung three bronze bullets.

“You don’t get to judge me. You can’t just come back into my life and do that.”

Max blinks rapidly, a gust of wind pressing along the back of her neck and sending a chill down her spine. Her heart picks up, its loud thudding covering her ears.

“I… I’m not...” Max sees the hurricane over the cliff’s edge, but Chloe’s still sitting there, unnoticing of any of it. It’s large and towering, bigger than anything Max has ever seen. It crosses slowly but surely for the town, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

“I’m so tired of everyone judging me.” Chloe says, and she’s standing up from the bench and waking forward. In a blink the hurricane is gone, but the chill in Max remains. She wants to follow but keeps where she sits.

“There’s so many things you don’t...” Chloe hesitates, her head bowing to the side but she still refuses to look at Max. She sounds so broken, barely held together in the five years Max has missed.

_I’m here now. I won’t ever leave you again._

“Well guess what, Max? I’m not a little boy anymore,” And that feels almost like a slap in the face, and Max realizes for the first time that Brooke had known Chloe’s name, had known what pronouns to use, “I’m a grown woman.”

There’s something of a pained smile on Chloe’s face. There’s no tears in her eyes, but Max knows she missed something. So many somethings. She touches her hand over her pocket.

She stands up, crossing over to Chloe and looking up at her.

“We’ve done this before, I think.”

Chloe frowns but doesn’t say anything. Max feels the cloud in her head, the memories of other weeks of October 2013 barely showing through. It falls away like it has since this morning. But another feeling overflows Max, taking in her long lost best friend before her. Never really lost and now not so far away, finally standing as who she was always supposed to be.

“I saw Nathan shoot you.” Max says, her voice low as if afraid someone else is around to hear. She could hear the wings of a bird taking flight nearby.

“What are you talking about?” Chloe asks, and so quickly her eyes fill with concern. She steps closer, and this time Max doesn’t flinch from her hand on her shoulder.

“He would’ve killed you, Chloe,” Max tells her, her throat hurting as she speaks, “You would’ve died before I got to see you again.”

Chloe’s mouth falls open, but only empty sound follows.

“How many times do I have to see you die?” Max shakes her head when she feels the tears welling up. Hands raise to wipe them away. “Why can’t I save you?”

“Hey, hey,” Chloe sounds freaked out, and Max doesn’t blame her. Half her thoughts seem from a far-off version of herself, trying to lead her down a path with only pieces of the road set down before her. “I’m here, Max. I was scared too, but I’m okay. Okay? I’m alive, and that’s thanks to you.”

“Because I have _powers_ ,” Max says, her voice higher now, “I saw you covered in blood. He… Nathan shot you and then I was back in class and it was the same as before, and then I—”

“Max, slow down.” Chloe has her hands on both of Max’s shoulders. The touch burns through Max’s hoodie. “Powers? What kind of powers?”

Max takes a deep breath, “I can travel through time—I know… I know you don’t believe me. I was only able to pull the alarm because I knew where I had to be to save you.”

She sighs when one of Chloe’s hands move to check her forehead.

“What are you on right now? You’re clearly still coming down from whatever it is.” Chloe waits a beat, “Look, you saved me, and I’m fucking ecstatic about it, but you don’t need to spin tales to impress me.”

Max holds her tongue and steps away from Chloe. The unease wraps around them and Max considers, again, the benefits of taking it all back. Her hand opens out, and she closes it a second later. No. _No._

“We should go back to your place. It’s going to start snowing soon.” Max says, closing her arms in front of her. Chloe looks confused, then shifts awkwardly.

“My step-douche is there and… it’s not really a good place to be right now.”

Max chews on her lip. There’s proof in the house to make Chloe believe her, but that would have to wait.

“Then my dorm. I’ll text my friends and we can meet.” Max says, already pulling out her phone.

“Do these friends of yours know about your so-called powers?” Chloe asks, and Max hears it in the way Chloe says _friends_ that she’s made an unintended blow.

“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” Max says, looking back at Chloe and trying to give her a good-natured smile. She doesn’t know if that’s what works, but Chloe steps down beside her.

“Fuck it, I will. Lead the way, Max.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like what im doing here. lemme know your thoughts on it.


End file.
